Sunday, November 10, 2013

On April 18, 2013, I successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation at the Chicago Theological Seminary. The dissertation title is A Logotherapy Hermeneutic Developed and Applied to the Book of Job. I was struck by the warm reception Frankl’s ideas were given by a group of biblical scholars and theologians who had had little exposure to Frankl outside the reading of the dissertation. I especially want to thank the Chicago Theological Seminary and my dissertation committee for allowing me to write on this topic.

A few months ago, on LogoTalk Radio #54, I talked a bit about what I mean by a “Logotherapy Hermeneutic.” In short, logotherapists know that examples of Frankl's principles have been explained and interpreted through numerous books, texts, and even movies. Although this has been a practice for some time, and is encouraged in the logotherapy curriculum, no theory as to how to interpret a story through a Franklian lens has ever been developed at a scholarly level. That is what this dissertation does, and that is what a Logotherapy Hermeneutic is -- a defined theory of textual interpretation based on Logotherapy. As such, it is closely related to what Frankl calls a "Special Existential Analysis."

The lecture that follows is my presentation to the Nineteenth World Congress on Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy in Dallas, Texas given on June 21, 2013. The lecture illustrates the application of a Logotherapy Hermeneutic to the Book of Job.

Our LogoTalk Radio Team

About Logotherapy

Logotherapy and existential analysis (LTEA) is the comprehensive psychological theory and therapy of Dr. Viktor E. Frankl. It relies on the defiant power of the human spirit to discover meaning under any and all circumstances.